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Students from Whispering Meadows Elementary pose for a photo with some of the more than 400 rocks the school's students painted with kind words or an inspirational message. The students set them out by the school sign in hopes people from the community will take them and place where they can be found by another person, spreading kindness throughout Fort Wayne. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

Rocks hand-painted by Whispering Meadows Elementary Schools students contain kind or inspirational words the children hope will spread kindness through Fort Wayne. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

The larger sign by the Whispering Meadows Elementary School sign tells people how to use the rocks students painted with a kind word or inspirational message. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

Students from Whispering Meadows Elementary pose for a photo with some of the more than 400 rocks the school’s students painted with kind words or an inspirational message. The students set them out by the school sign in hopes people from the community will take them and place where they can be found by another person, spreading kindness throughout Fort Wayne. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

Rocks hand-painted by Whispering Meadows Elementary Schools students contain kind or inspirational words the children hope will spread kindness through Fort Wayne. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

The larger sign by the Whispering Meadows Elementary School sign tells people how to use the rocks students painted with a kind word or inspirational message. (Courtesy of Stacey Fleming of Southwest Allen County Schools)

Whispering Meadows Elementary School students hope to spread kindness around Fort Wayne through hand-painted rocks bearing kind or inspirational words.

The students undertook the project as part of their celebration this week of Random Acts of Kindness week, a news release from Southwest Allen County Schools said.

Students have painted more than 400 rocks with kind words and the hashtag #WMESBeKind, the news release said. The rocks will be placed outside the school, 415 Mission Hill Drive, at 12:45 p.m. Thursday for the public to pick up.

Students and school staff hope people will place the rocks around the community to help spread kindness, the news release said.

“We invite families, kids and the community to take from our pile and place the rocks where they think they need to be found,” Whispering Meadows School Counselor Kathryn Lopez said in the news release. “Maybe it’s outside a doctor’s office, the hospital or at a park — someplace where someone who finds it sees that they are cared about.”

So students can see how an act of kindness travels, school officials ask people who find the rocks to take a photo of where the rock was found and send it via Twitter with a tweet to @WMES_ELEM with the hashtag #WMESBeKind, the news release said.

The project is similar to the national The Kindness Rocks Project, which encourages random acts of kindness by inviting people to put inspirational messages on rocks they leave in random locations where someone else may find them.

Stacey Fleming, Southwest Allen County Schools communications director, doesn’t believe the Whispering Meadows project was based on The Kindness Rocks Project. However, school staff have or will register their project with The Kindness Rocks website to show their project is helping spread kindness, Fleming said.